Mexican Green Bean Salad

One of our favorite ways to eat green beans is with salsa. The tomatoes, onions, chiles, spices, and vinegar perk up the beans in the most wonderful way. This bean salad recipe is sort of a riff on the salsa theme, taking it up a notch with pickled jalapeños, cilantro, cotija cheese, and avocados. It would make a perfect picnic salad for a Mexican themed potluck. If you love Mexican food, I’m willing to bet you’ll love this salad as much as we do.

Method

1 Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add the beans and simmer until just crisp tender, about 5 minutes. Drain the beans and run cold water over them to cool them quickly. Drain completely.

2 Place beans in a large bowl. Gently mix in the the lime juice or vinegar, olive oil, 1/4 cup onion, sliced pickled jalapeños, sea salt, oregano and cilantro. Let sit for half an hour.

3 When ready to serve, gently mix in the chopped red onion and cotija cheese. Serve the avocado slices and tomato wedges on the side or mixed into the salad.

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This recipe is an adaptation of a variation of a recipe for a cactus salad (ensalada de nopalitos) in Diana Kennedy's The Art of Mexican Cooking, recently re-released in a new edition. If you adore authentic Mexican food and want to learn more about cooking it from a master, this is the book to have. It's a classic.

I made this salad on the weekend and it turned out great. I substituted fresh oregano for the dried, fresh jalapeno pepper for the canned and I used feta cheese (couldn’t find the mexican cheese). The cilantro and avocado really make this dish special. Thanks for the recipe!

Elise,
I made this salad 2 times in 1 weeks time- 1 for a tex-mex BBQ and the other for my husbands work potluck. Both times the salad was devoured! A few alterations to the recipe:
*Added an entire bunch of cilantro (YUM!)
*Omitted the cheese (for my vegan friends)
*I added 2 avacados, cubed, on top (with 1 entire lime juiced on them to stop the browning. Total limes used in the salad- 2)
*Only used diced red onion
Thank you for the recipe. It is amazing!

OMG!!! I am eating this for dinner and for the first time am happy the rest of my family doesn’t like green beans because that means it’s all for MEMEMEME! I left out the cheese and jalapenos and only used red onions. I will be making this often!

Could you recommend another cheese to use instead of Cotija? Perhaps Halloumi or Feta? I live in Qatar and am pretty sure cotija cheese is NOT available here… Or would it be better to just leave the Cheese out? Thanks :)

You can substitute the cotija with feta, or another salty, relatively dry, crumbly cheese. ~Elise

Green beens (and dried beans) originated in Mexico over 7,000 years ago. Spaniards hen they arrived in Mexico took both bush beans and pole beans and the beans arrived in Europe and Asia. Those this is a great recepie even though it is not traditional.